In today's digital society organizations depend on having ready access to their data. Data, however, can be lost in a variety of ways such as through accidental deletion, data corruption, disasters and catastrophes (e.g., fires or flooding), media failures (e.g., disk crash), computer viruses, and so forth.
Thus, many organizations rely on a backup application to make backups files, folders, and other data for the purpose of being able to restore them in case of data loss. In some cases, however, there can be a problem with the backup application. For example, the backup application code or algorithm may be corrupt, the file system itself may be corrupt, the backup application may not be supported by the file system, a patch to the backup application may have been applied incorrectly or may have introduced new bugs, the backup application may not be configured correctly, and so forth. As a result, the backup application may not backup the correct data. For example, data that should be backed up may not be backed up, data that should not be backed up may be backed up, or both.
The consequences for an incorrect backup can be disastrous. For example, in some cases, a user may not discover that the backup application is faulty until well after a backup has been made and a restore is needed. Therefore, there is a need for systems and techniques to validate a backup application and help ensure that the backup application will make accurate backups.
The subject matter discussed in the background section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in the background section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in the background section or associated with the subject matter of the background section should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in the background section merely represents different approaches, which in and of themselves may also be inventions. EMC, Data Domain, Data Domain Replicator, and Data Domain Boost are trademarks of EMC Corporation.